


Ruin in Your Eyes

by beeawolf



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Arno doesn't know how to be a person, Canonical Character Death, Dubious Historical Accuracy, Grief/Mourning, M/M, eagle vision malfunction, pardon my french
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-28
Updated: 2018-04-22
Packaged: 2019-04-13 23:01:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 11,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14122734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beeawolf/pseuds/beeawolf
Summary: “I must say that you planned your dramatic collapse quite efficiently.”Arno isn’t sure what he means. Doesn’t particularly care. Bonaparte is a means to an end at the moment. That is, after all, what they’ve been to each other since the beginning.[In which Arno deals with grief and near-death experiences and the conundrum of how to live in the world once it's fallen apart. And also the future emperor of France. Set sometime after the events at the temple.]





	1. Chapter One

Arno lands inelegantly, and for some reason this is what irritates him the most. The blood welling up through his coat, the sting of pain – familiar and yet so much _more_ this time than it’s ever been – all trifling matters compared to the clumsy way he’d tumbled from the roof, the failed attempts to break his fall with hands that moved too slow, refused to grip.

            And so he finds himself crumpled in a heap on the ground below, curled around the burning ache in his gut, hissing out a fervent curse between grit teeth. It’s _embarrassing_. Granted, there seems to be no audience at this time of night aside from the usual array of rats and stray cats, but embarrassing nevertheless.

            He can’t move for a long moment, can’t seem to do anything but relearn how to breathe around the knot of pain. Everything centers around it, and when he forces himself to rise at last, his shoulders curve automatically, one arm lifting to press up against the wound. As though this will be enough to fend off any further anguish.

            Arno thinks, faintly, that he may have pushed it a bit too far this time. Perhaps. Just possibly. Élise would laugh at him – or no, no, actually, maybe she’d be angry...

            But it’s no good to think of Élise. He locks the thought away in the neat, practiced manner of the professional and perpetual survivor. Simple as clicking a pocketwatch shut. And just as permanent. 

            He takes one swaying step, stumbles, and catches himself on the corner of a closed up shop. Whether for the night or for ever, he isn’t sure. He leans against the door, trying to discern where he is. He’d been running more or less blind for a while there, some survival instinct finally kicking in and dragging him away from the fight he hadn’t even meant to start. (Some guards could be so _touchy_.)

            In any case the street is a blur of shadow now, could be any damned street in Paris, so Arno scrapes together the ragged remaining bits of his concentration. The second sight, when he summons it, is wobbly and strange. Golds and blues and reds where he thinks they probably shouldn’t be, muted color bleeding over everywhere, and he feels his back thud against the shop door, feels his knees buckle as his hands lift toward the piercing agony in his skull.

            Stupid. He ought to have known. If it hurt when he was drunk, of course it hurts when he’s dying.

            _Dying_ , part of his mind responds. _Really? Do you think so?_

            “Possibly,” Arno answers, and only realizes he’s spoken aloud a few seconds after. He wants to laugh but it comes out a sigh, and he feels a profound longing for a strong drink. His stomach must think he’s had one already, because it gifts him with a wave of intense nausea, and he doubles over, pressing harder on the wound – he isn’t even sure why at this point – and thinking, _Élise_ would _be angry_.

            His two sights bleed together even though he’s almost certain his eyes are closed, bringing him ghostly outlines of people who aren’t, who cannot be there – his father, Monsieur de la Serre, Élise.

            Élise.

            Élise.

            He stretches a hand out to her, and she ignores him, and so they reprise their usual roles. Except that there is another ghost, one he doesn’t quite recognize until it speaks, the voice low and surprised, the accent unmistakable.

            “Dorian?”

            Bonaparte.

            Arno blinks his eyes open, definitely open, but the second sight won’t leave him.  Bonaparte’s shape is wavering, perhaps not real at all, shifting from blue to white to red to blue to white to red again like some sort of mockery of patriotism, and Arno closes his eyes to make it stop.

            It doesn’t. He feels a touch at his arm, and hears the familiar sound of his own hidden blade being drawn. Instinct. Tangled up and faulty, but struggling through nonetheless, ready to draw blood at a moment’s notice, friend or foe.

            Oh, Élise would be angry.

            “Well,” says Bonaparte. The hand stills on Arno’s arm. “I hardly think that’s necessary.”

            Arno has a sudden memory of their first meeting – gun barrel to the gut and all – and nevertheless lets the blade retract. Lets his eyes stay shut. Ignores Bonaparte, whatever he’s saying now, however real he might or might not be. There’s a blessed, blessed blackness swimming at the edges of the blue-white-red-now-gold blurring mess, and Arno is grateful to let the wave of dark rise over him.

            But it doesn’t last. He feels his body lifted and lets out a low groan at the stabbing pain this inspires. His boots slip on the cobblestones, scrambling for purchase, and the world rushes back to him in merciless detail. His vision clears and fogs and clears again; he tilts his head to see grey eyes, too close, gazing at him almost curiously. Strong arms hold him upright despite his traitorous feet, and Arno tries unsuccessfully to duck out of them. He’d rather prefer, he thinks, to stay on the ground and let the dark swallow him up for a while.

            “Really now,” Bonaparte says crossly, and shifts Arno’s weight like it’s nothing, throwing him off-balance again. The world flickers briefly back into a mess of wrong colors and he feels a bit like vomiting on Bonaparte’s shining blue boots.

            “Let me go,” Arno croaks instead, and is irritated at the petulance he hears.

            Bonaparte ignores him, striding forward and dragging Arno with him. It’s a stumbling and awkward affair. “You know,” says the general, “when I heard the noise outside, I thought it might be some sort of stray.” His voice lifts, amused. “I suppose I wasn’t wrong.”

            Arno wants to punch him. Wants to sink his hidden blade right into the general’s throat, crawl away, and go back to sleep in his nice dark street corner. He doesn’t.

            “It’s nice that they let you go outside now,” he mutters instead, and feels Napoleon tense. The house arrest had damaged his ego, then, if not ultimately his reputation.

             “You’re certainly pleasant tonight,” Bonaparte answers coolly, pausing them beneath the uneven glow of a streetlamp. “Shall I bring you to a physician or let you crawl back to the gutter?”

             Arno swallows against a returning wave of nausea. “Café Théâtre,” he says thickly. Which is stupid of him. But his thoughts are too muddled for him to care, circling tight round the pain in his side, his head, his everywhere. He wants his bed, if he can’t have his street corner.

             Bonaparte raises his eyebrows. “I don’t believe you’re in any shape for a performance.”

            “No,” Arno growls. “I – my rooms are above it.”

            The eyebrows lift higher. “So you _do_ live somewhere? I was beginning to get the impression that you simply ran about with the alleycats. Perching on rooftops and windowsills and the like.”

            Arno’s wrist twitches. “Bonaparte –”

            “Very well, then. Café Théâtre. I must say that you planned your dramatic collapse quite efficiently.”

            Arno isn’t sure what he means. Doesn’t particularly care. Bonaparte is a means to an end at the moment. That is, after all, what they’ve been to each other since the beginning.

            “It’s an awful lot of blood,” Bonaparte goes on, because he doesn’t have the good sense to shut his infernal mouth for the space of a single breath. The part of Arno’s mind concerned with dying poses the theory that it’s a deliberate decision.

            _If you fell asleep now_ , his mind whispers, _perhaps you wouldn’t wake up._

            So he tries to focus on Bonaparte’s voice – the sound, if not the words. There’s an oddly soothing quality to it, a pleasantness to his accent. Ever steady and calm, this man who’d once immobilized an approaching assassin like it was child’s play. So sure of himself. So _reasonable,_ in all his absurd ambitions _._ Perhaps that’s why his soldiers like him.

            _Perhaps that’s why_ you _like him. Despite the rest._

            “I do not,” Arno mumbles.

            Bonaparte’s voice pauses, and then he seems to decide to ignore the interruption.

             “...In any case, it seems my insomnia is your good fortune,” he continues. “Almost there, I believe.”

            Arno grunts. He has no idea where they are; his vision won’t settle, and time is passing in odd, disjointed ways.

            It reminds him of after...of after Élise, when the world had split apart for the third and worst time, when time itself had stopped mattering or meaning anything. He’d found himself arriving places without knowing how he’d gotten there, or else falling into strange spells and getting lost in the city for hours. And that had been sober. If anything, the drink had made it more bearable, less frightening. Easier to stay in one place. 

            Café Théâtre appears to be glowing white at the edges, and Arno thinks that probably isn’t true. Napoleon exhibits no reaction to it. But then, he’d had no reaction to cannon fire either, when they’d met.

             “There’s a side entrance,” Arno murmurs. “Through the garden.”

            “So there is,” says Bonaparte affably. He guides them through it, and Arno slips to blackness for a while, and when he can see again, he’s facing the stairs.

            Stairs. Damn. He had forgotten about the stairs.

            And for some reason it’s then, when he’s safely behind a locked door and facing the stairs to his own rooms, that the panic and the chaos and the blood loss of the night catch up to him entirely. His legs wobble, his head spins, and he slumps downward despite Bonaparte’s support.

            “Arno?” says the general, but Arno can’t answer except in a gasp. The second sight paints everything red, red, red, _red_ for an agonizing moment. Bonaparte’s hand on his spine burns. He vomits and feels instantly guilty about the mess, wonders if he’s dripped blood too.

            “All right,” says Bonaparte, to no one in particular, and Arno has the sensation of being strangely weightless, utterly unmoored – and then he feels nothing at all.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I can’t imagine,” says Arno slowly, “that the great General Bonaparte playing nursemaid to an assassin is in the best interest of France.”

 

            Bonaparte is reading beside the bed when Arno wakes, and Arno squints silently at him for a long, long moment before remembering why he’s there. He looks down at himself, divested of his bloodstained clothes and neatly bandaged, and back up at Bonaparte again.

             “Ah,” says Bonaparte, meeting his eyes and smiling faintly. “I’m afraid I did call you a physician. A friend of mine. Not to worry, he’s quite discreet.”

             “Don’t you,” Arno begins, and it comes out in a thin croak, so he clears his throat and tries again. “Don’t you have better things to do, _Général_?”

            If Arno’s tone rankles him, Bonaparte doesn’t show it. He turns a page of his book, eyes drifting back to the text. “Certainly,” he says. “But I was curious.”

            “Curious,” Arno repeats. He thinks of all that Napoleon Bonaparte might have found here to satisfy his curiosity. Thinks of Élise’s letters currently strewn across his desk, and silently curses his carelessness.

            “Mm. You have quite the library here.” Bonaparte lifts the book, then gazes around the room. “It’s a charming place. I ought to have known better; you clean up far nicer than an alleycat.”

            Arno glowers and begins to sit up, then hits a solid wall of pain and bites back a cry. He sinks sullenly down again.

            “Yes, I wouldn’t,” Bonaparte says mildly. “It’s a deep wound. The doctor was quite concerned.” His expression is bland, voice pleasant, the message clear: _I_ was not concerned.

            Arno looks away, stares at his folded hands, blinking again and again in the light. Everything remains its proper color. Nothing glows. He’s afraid to test the second sight just yet, in the event that it tries to drive him to madness again.

            Something is needling at him beyond the pain, an uneasy prickling at his neck, and he realizes – it’s the strange weightlessness of his own wrists. He twists very carefully, scanning the room, and feels Bonaparte’s eyes on him.

            “Looking for that wonderful contraption of yours?” the general asks.

             “Seeing as I have no idea what you mean by that...no.”

            Bonaparte pays no mind to the sarcasm. “Your blade,” he says, “is on the bedside table.”

            Arno tilts his head toward it, and sure enough, the gauntlet is balanced carefully there. It looks rather cleaner than it had on his wrist. Something twinges oddly in his chest at the realization.  

            “I suppose I should thank you,” he says, at last.

            “Yes, you should. I am willing to pretend you just did.” Bonaparte closes the book with a soft thump, reaching over to lift a glass of water from the table with its messy stacks of books. He carries it to Arno wordlessly, settling back into the chair with apparent satisfaction when Arno drinks it down.

            “I don’t suppose you’ll tell me what left you in such a state,” Bonaparte comments.

            Arno doesn’t reply, partly because he can’t quite recall, and maybe that’s the blood loss still. Some mess with a few city guards, something stupid and pointless, something he hadn’t meant to do. Nothing he wants to admit to, and particularly not to Bonaparte.

            He thinks of getting up, imagines dragging himself downstairs for something to drink, perhaps, or at least stepping across the room to find a book of his own. But the pain when he shifts again is enough to make him feel like passing out, and so he lies silent and still. Perhaps Bonaparte will leave if he’s boring enough.

            “‘It is part of a good man to do great and noble deeds, though he risk everything,’” Napoleon says, and it takes Arno a moment to realize that he’s quoting the book.

            “Plutarch,” Arno says.

            Bonaparte meets his gaze, eyes bright, mouth curved in a triumphant smile. “Yes. You have good taste.”

            “It’s a naive sentiment,” Arno answers shortly, staring at the ceiling. “Your discreet physician friend. Did he say how long this would take to heal?”

            “He did not. I believe he said, and I quote, ‘It’s up to the grace of God now if he lives or dies, and at the moment I would put money on the grave.’ Of course I told him he was quite mistaken, as you have consistently proven too impetuous to accept orders, from deities or otherwise.”

             “Touching,” Arno mutters.

            “He will return in the evening,” Bonaparte assures him. “To assess your condition.”

            “That won’t be necessary.”

            “Even so,” Bonaparte says, and goes quiet again, evidently returning to his reading.

            Arno turns his head to stare at him instead of the ceiling. “Will you sit there all morning?”

            “It’s late afternoon,” Bonaparte says, without looking up. “I assure you, I have had my fill of the day. Returning here was a reprieve.”

            Returning, Arno thinks. How long had Bonaparte stayed, before he went off to assume his other duties? There’s a space cleared on the writing table where a tray of food sits untouched, and he wonders how long it’s been there, and who brought it up. Madame Gouze? Or Bonaparte?

            “I can’t imagine,” says Arno slowly, “that the great General Bonaparte playing nursemaid to an assassin is in the best interest of France.”

            “Dorian,” Bonaparte says sharply, and finally his grey eyes flash annoyance. “I have met with several concerned persons this morning, including a terribly rattled city guard who feared that some rogue he’d injured was still lurking villainously on the rooftops. I have spent the rest of my day lecturing maddeningly sloppy soldiers on the frankly horrendous state of their uniforms. I think I have earned my reading time.”     

            Arno considers this in silence, letting the words sink in to his still-sluggish brain. Then, “ _Sloppy soldiers_?” he repeats, incredulous. “ _This_ is what concerns the hero of Toulon?”

            “Among other things. Have you read much Plutarch?”

            Arno sighs, and closes his eyes. He’s beginning to feel hungry, but not enough to ask for the food sitting a few impossible steps away. “A long time ago,” he says.

            This may or may not be accurate, of course. Everything before this year, he feels, was a long time ago. There is an abyss between the time before she died and the time after. He ought to be used to it by now.

            Bonaparte makes a disapproving noise. “One should always brush up on the classics with regularity.”

            Arno rolls his eyes. “One does not always feel like it.”

            “One should try,” says Bonaparte firmly. “Nevertheless.”

            “ _Oui,_ _Général_.”

            “Incorrigible,” Bonaparte murmurs, and then they both fall to silence – Napoleon reading, Arno drifting back and forth from sleep to waking to sleep again. Once, he surfaces gasping from a flood of pain, and Bonaparte brings him a small cup of something awful-smelling. Arno downs it in one desperate gulp and soon feels himself drift away from his body, back to strange but mostly painless dreaming.

            He awakens again in time to meet the discreet physician, a dark-haired man with a country accent and a careful manner.

            “You’re healing remarkably well,” the doctor decides, once he’s poked and prodded and reapplied the bandaging. He looks to Bonaparte. “Has he eaten?”

            “He has not,” Arno says, a bit irritably. He isn’t fond of feeling like a cadaver to be examined, has almost entirely managed to avoid any significant doctoring up until this point. The doctor’s gaze returns to him, unimpressed.

            “Well, you must. The body needs nourishment to heal properly.”

            “Are you going to permit me to fetch my own dinner?” Arno asks, and the doctor frowns at him.

            “With all due respect, sir, you are quite fortunate to be breathing,” he says. “And I will not see you endanger my good stitching.”

            “As I said, Larrey,” Bonaparte comments, still comfortably seated in his reading chair and looking upon the scene with deep amusement. “Impetuous.”

            “So it seems,” Larrey answers, and Arno scowls at the both of them.

            It is Bonaparte who brings up a fresh plate of food from the kitchen below, after the doctor leaves. Nothing spectacular, but the thin soup may as well be ambrosia to Arno’s starving tongue, and he finishes it so swiftly that his stomach aches.

            “Madame Gouze is an interesting woman,” Bonaparte opines, and Arno almost chokes on his lukewarm cocoa.  

            “You met her?”

            “We exchanged pleasantries. She is concerned about your condition.”

            “Aren’t we all.”

            “It appears she has been concerned for some time.” Bonaparte gives him a quick, questioning look. He’s eating his own dinner somewhat less ravenously, dipping stale bread into the soup.

            Arno doesn’t respond to this; even if he’d wanted to, he simply doesn’t have the energy. He finishes his cocoa, bit by bit, and then sits up as far as he can without collapsing into agony.

            “I have appreciated your assistance,” he says carefully, coating his words with a cordial but decisive distance. “I believe I can manage on my own from here.”

            Napoleon pauses, studying him. “Very well,” he says at last, and rises from his chair, taking his unfinished dinner with him. He tucks Plutarch under his arm. “I would like to borrow this,” he announces. “It’s an excellent edition. I will return it to you within the week.”

            “Yes, fine,” Arno mutters. It isn’t as though he’s truly asking permission anyway.

            “ _Merci_.” The general pauses at the stairs, then turns back briefly and adds, “Be well.”

             And then Bonaparte is gone, leaving Arno alone in the darkening room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Dominique Jean Larrey was a real doctor, and Napoleon met him in 1794 in Toulon.  
> 2\. I don’t know much about 1700s French food so bear with me here.  
> 3\. Napoleon really was a big fan of Plutarch and of reading in general and kept meticulous libraries, apparently.  
> 4\. I do not actually own AC Unity so I’m going off of screenshots and concept art and memory for the layout of the cafe and Arno’s room – forgive me if I’ve made mistakes.  
> 4\. I guess there are going to be at least three chapters now?


	3. Chapter 3

Arno drowns in dreaming for most of the night, interrupted only by the merciless pain that drags him up to the surface again and again. The doctor had left behind a small vial of the same terrible elixir that Bonaparte had given him earlier in the day, with instructions to drink sparingly if the pain became overwhelming.

            But Arno has never been good at _sparingly_. He swipes the vial from the bedside table and drinks what even he knows must be too much, and soon the room spins and lurches and he closes his eyes so as not to vomit again. He can feel the burning ache in his gut warring with the medicine burning his throat. It’s an agonizing eternity before the world lets him slip away again.

            He doesn’t know how much time has passed before he wakes, mouth dry, hair matted with sweat. It’s the creak of the floorboards that sends him scrambling to sit up, hissing  at the stab of pain in his side.

            The hidden blade is resting beside his pillow – he’d moved it after Bonaparte had left – and Arno grasps for it clumsily, squinting in what must be afternoon light. His fingers move too slowly on the straps, his arms are too heavily weighted, and a voice in his head snipes that he’d be better off just throwing the thing at his would-be attacker. 

            But that turns out to not be necessary anyway. There is no attacker at all, only Larrey, stepping carefully around the stacks of books on the floor and carrying with him a heavy leather bag. Arno shoves the gauntlet back beneath his pillow, eyeing the doctor.

            “Did you forget something?” he says.

            “Good afternoon, _Monsieur_ Dorian,” Larrey replies, and drags an errant stool to the bedside. He reaches into the bag, drawing out fresh bandages and a small bottle of some sort of clear liquid. 

             “I wasn’t aware I had hired your services,”  Arno says thinly.

            Larrey looks up with a wry smile. “You have not. _Général_ Bonaparte has.”

            “He – what?”

            “I am here under his instruction,” Larrey clarifies. “And, truth be told, for my own satisfaction. There is a funny thing with near-fatal wounds, you see, wherein they require more than a day’s worth of treatment. If I may –?”

            Arno knows a lost battle when he sees it. He sighs, giving a terse nod, and the doctor unbuttons Arno’s shirt, pushing it aside to unravel last evening’s bandaging. The wound beneath is a nasty sight, raw and oozing and smelling sharply of blood. Arno is no stranger to gruesome wounds, but even so he turns his head away, swallowing.

            “Is the general aware that I am not one of his soldiers?” he says, partly for some distraction from the sting of whatever it is that the doctor is dabbing onto the wound. And partly because it gnaws at his nerves, the idea that Bonaparte is sending doctors to his doorstep without his consent.

            “Odd that you should ask,” answers Larrey. “I have asked myself the very same question on more than one occasion.”

            Arno glances back, and to his own surprise finds himself smiling faintly at the conspiratorial look that Larrey gives him.

             “I believe this will heal nicely – _if_ you are patient,” Larrey adds, as he finishes up redressing the wound with an unpleasantly pungent poultice. “ _Général_ Bonaparte does not seem to think patience is one of your virtues, but I see you’ve healed your share of scars. The key is to go slowly. Rest. Eat. Rest more. In a few days’ time you will be well enough for short walks to take the air.”

            “A few days,” Arno repeats, choosing to ignore the comment about Bonaparte and his entirely unqualified opinions on virtue. (And when, exactly, had Bonaparte _formed_ that particular opinion? When Arno was painstakingly carrying out the then-captain’s little errands, putting up with his fancies for the sake of reliable information? Or perhaps when Arno had so neatly plucked Rouille from his path to greatness?)             

            “Yes, and _short_ walks, mind you. No farther than your garden.” Larrey gives him a stern look. “You have a lovely garden, _Monsieur_ Dorian; spend some time in it.”

            “Certainly. Perhaps I’ll retire altogether, spend my days watering roses,” Arno says, letting himself lie back again.

            Larrey ignores him. “I’ll return tomorrow evening if I can, or else send an assistant,” he says, and then pauses, looking at the half-empty vial of medicine on the bedside table. “I believe I said to use this _sparingly_.”

            “Did you?” says Arno carelessly. “I must not have heard.”

            “You _are_ like him,” Larrey says, shaking his head, but he’s walking out the door before Arno can ask him what exactly that’s supposed to mean.

           

*

            The next few days pass slowly, despite being half-swallowed by long bouts of unconsciousness. It’s strange what exhausts him from moment to moment: standing up, combing his hair, shelving a book. His body, Larrey warns him, is fighting hard even as he rests. It should therefore not be a surprise that he is exhausted by such simple actions.

            But it is a constant source of frustration. As a poisonous sort of past-time, Arno finds himself obsessively trying to recall precisely _how_ the wound had come about, precisely _what_ he had done wrong. This proves to be a pointless endeavor; his memory of the incident never sharpens, remains foggy and confused. What he remembers most vividly is the stink of his own blood, the feeling of his boots slipping on the rooftiles. And the initial fear of dying, followed by bitter relief.

            He tries, again and again, to put it out of his mind altogether.

            On the fourth day, the wound is sufficiently closed to allow him to soak in his own bath – and for just a moment, with his aches and pains soothed by the warm water, Arno feels at ease.

            On the fifth day, he buttons up his coat and makes it down the stairs at last. He manages to speak to Madame Gouze for a few moments, dryly expressing to her his newfound interest in gardening. He even catches ten minutes of a wildly terrible stage performance before the pain sends him lurching back up to his rooms and stumbling to bed again.

            Arno feels stupidly cheerful about the whole affair. Absurdly accomplished. There’s something clarifying about having his world narrowed down to such simple aims: To walk again. To eat, to sleep. To heal.

            _You are supposed to be an assassin_ , one of the nastier voices in his head chides him. _Look at you._ _You can barely make it up a staircase._ _What, pray tell, is there to be_ smiling _about?_

            Which rather deflates him.

            But then he _isn’t_ an assassin anymore, he reminds the voice. Not officially. He is Arno Dorian, and not yet dead, and that seems like quite enough to be getting on with at the moment. He takes a ( _sparing_ ) sip of his medicine and sleeps for a long time after that.

            Inevitably he dreams of Élise, running away from him – always away from him – with her sword raised high, a crackle of electricity sharpening the air, his own voice shouting too late, always too late.

 

            It’s on the seventh day that he finally makes it out to the bloody garden. For a while he walks in an awkward, slumping sort of way around the place, wanting to breathe the spring air, wanting something to _do_ with himself. But the exhaustion has him searching for a bench soon enough, and he settles himself on one between two rose bushes. Which is where, soon enough, Bonaparte finds him.

            “Madame Gouze advised me to look for you here,” says the general, striding across the grass with his uniform perfectly buttoned to the neck. (This, Arno thinks, cannot possibly be comfortable.) “Apparently, she says, you have developed a strong interest in roses.”

            “You sent your doctor after me,” Arno accuses.

            Bonaparte smiles, holding his hands out in a helpless shrug. “I cannot help the fact that Larrey was concerned for his reputation. You _are_ his latest miracle patient, you know.”

            “I’m charmed.”

            “He says you are doing well.”

            Arno half-shrugs back at him. “Better,” he admits. “Each day a little more.”

            “Which is all one can hope for,” Napoleon says gravely. He sits down beside Arno, folding his hands before him.

            “And you?” Arno says. “Not still beset by those dreaded sloppy soldiers, I hope?”    

            Bonaparte smiles slightly. “Beset by all manner of things,” he says. “But not that, no. Thankfully the men seem to have taken to heart the importance of a tidy uniform.”

            “Well, thank god for that.”

            “Thank the _Armée_ ,” Bonaparte corrects.

            Arno doesn’t challenge this, and they fall to what is nearly a companionable silence, watching a few songbirds flit around in the bushes that line the garden. He’s startled to realize that he could almost close his eyes, could almost drift to sleep, just like this.

            “When I came upon you the other day,” Bonaparte says at last, “when you were asleep, I think...you spoke of Élise.”

            Arno’s stomach lurches, all pretense of contentment disappearing. He does close his eyes now, for the space of a single, long breath.

            Bonaparte’s tone is careful. “Did something...happen?”

            “She’s dead,” Arno replies, hating the harshness of his voice. Hating the question. He forces himself to look at Bonaparte, aware of the vitriol in his own expression. “Is that what you wanted to know?”

            Bonaparte simply gazes back at him, sober and calm. “I had hoped I was wrong,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

            Arno feels a surge of reckless anger, a shadow of the rage that’s been burning through his blood ever since the temple. First it roared at everything and everyone. Now it’s mostly turned upon himself.

            “It was my fault,” he says. He’s never spoken of it before. Has hardly admitted it to himself. It feels rightfully bitter on his tongue.

            Bonaparte’s eyes flicker surprise. “Whyever would it be?”

            Arno scoffs. “A thousand reasons. A thousand ways I could have stopped her. Or could have helped her.” The anger digs deeper into him, stirring a kind of muted violence in his temperament that he supposes has always been there. He wants to _use_ the blade strapped to his wrist, to make someone suffer for the injustice of his grief.

            But, of course, there is no guilty party left. Save for him.

            Bonaparte is silent for a while, the chirping of the birds filling the space between them. And then he sighs. “There is always the temptation to ask ourselves what we could have done,” he says. “It does not change the truth of what we did.”

            Arno gives him an incredulous look. “Is that supposed to be comforting?”

            “It is simply true. You gain nothing from this.”

            “Well, _merci_ , _Général_ , for the wise counsel.”

            Bonaparte doesn’t reply for a moment, and then stands abruptly. “I have left your book on the shelf beside the desk,” he says. “I would like to borrow another.”

            Arno blinks at the change of subject, but he finds himself too thrown off balance, too mired in wordless anger to pursue the other. “Fine,” he says, and stands a bit more slowly. They walk together to the stairs, and Arno hesitates at the bottom. The consequence of his overeager garden stroll is beginning to manifest in a persistent ache. He feels Bonaparte watching him, and steels himself, taking the climb slowly.

            When he inevitably stumbles, Bonaparte steps up beside him, offering his arm wordlessly. Arno, too weary now to nurse his wounded pride, takes it.

            Together they carry on, Arno trying and failing to not lean on Bonaparte, Bonaparte acting as though he does not notice, and at last Arno manages to get to his bed without incident. If nothing else, the absurd trial of the staircase has drained him of most of his anger.

            “I was looking at your edition of _The Republic_ ,” says Bonaparte, settling himself in the same chair he had taken the last time. “Plato is another of my favorites.”

            “Borrow whatever you’d like,” Arno answers, then looks up to meet his searching eyes and adds, “I am sure it is for the good of France.”        

            Bonaparte simply raises his eyebrows. “And are you thinking much of that these days?”

            Arno is perched somewhat painfully at the edge of the bed, unwilling yet to lie down, to concede the day again to unconsciousness. “Of what?”

            “The good of France. I seem to recall it being a focus of your...work.”

            Arno almost laughs. “My work,” he says, “has been put on an indefinite hold. On account of my being a rule-breaking, insolent bastard. According to some.”

            “I see.” Bonaparte studies him for a beat. “My own offer of work still stands, you know.”

             “I’ve told you no. Several times.”

            “Simply an offer. And a good one at that.”

            “It’s a stupid one,” Arno says, “on account of my being a rule-breaking, insolent bastard.”

            “I must say I disagree with that assessment on at least two counts.”

            Arno allows himself to lie back against the pillow, not bothering to remove his coat. The gauntlet is reassuringly heavy on his wrist and despite the moment, despite the bitterness of the conversation, he’s beginning to feel almost comfortably tired. “Very kind of you, _Général_.”

            “Napoleon,” says Bonaparte, in an offhand sort of way. “So long as you refuse to be a soldier.”

            Arno glances at him in curious surprise. The general looks back at him impassively.

            “Napoleon, then. If it so matters to you.” He hasn’t said the name before, he realizes. There is some satisfaction to it, a savoring of the syllables. Not entirely a French name, not truly, for this _grande général_ of theirs who speaks still with a Corsican accent, who sometimes struggles to express himself in the language of his own army.        

            There is some satisfaction in Bonaparte’s expression, too, and Arno wonders at it.  

            Bonaparte remains mostly quiet in his chair after that, reading Plato in the failing light while Arno drifts into a pleasant half-sleep, helped along by the scant remaining medicine. Below them some sort of performance is raising equal cheers and jeers – but the noise is distant, a scene set somewhere far away. Occasionally Bonaparte reads a phrase or two aloud, and Arno blinks briefly awake, offers noncommittal sounds in response.

            “Arno,” Bonaparte says at last, when the light has fallen too low for reading.

            “Mm,” he replies, eloquently. He opens his eyes, struggles to find Bonaparte’s figure in the dark, and thoughtlessly brings forth the second sight for the first time in days. It doesn’t fail him this time, or at least not badly – it outlines Bonaparte in pale blue and gold, colors flickering through each other.

            “I will return this to you,” Bonaparte says.

            “Fantastic,” Arno answers, unconcerned. He closes his eyes, the colors still playing on the backs of his eyelids.

            “Arno,” Bonaparte repeats, after a pause, and this time Arno feels a touch of annoyance. He doesn’t open his eyes.

            “Yes?”

            The noise continues below, the clatter of silverware, laughter and shouting. Bonaparte’s voice is soft above it.

             “I do not believe,” he says, “that it was your fault.”

             It takes the span of a few breaths for Arno’s sleep-muddled mind to process this. By the time he sits up, blinking in the dark, Bonaparte has gone.

           

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, I am taking major historical liberties and also medical liberties.


	4. Chapter 4

Larrey’s visits grow further and further apart as Arno’s days grow longer, less hampered by such long and restless sleeping. He ventures, once or twice, outside of his garden, and finds himself both absurdly exhausted and thoroughly pleased by a successful trip to a nearby bakery.

            Bonaparte continues to come and go. Sometimes he simply leaves the latest borrowed book sitting on Arno’s desk. Sometimes he meets Arno in the garden, and together they stroll in slow circles, the general talking, Arno providing sarcastic commentary.

            In fact Bonaparte seeks out Arno’s opinion with such honest, serious consideration that Arno at first thinks he’s being facetious. The feeling of being so earnestly _consulted_ is unfamiliar enough that he wonders if it’s ever happened to him before. They speak of politics, of the weather, of the night’s entertainment, of Bonaparte’s grand plans and reading choices. They do not speak again of Élise.

*

            The assassins arriving in the garden are not wholly unexpected. Mostly Arno is surprised that he hasn’t seen them before. He’s been back living at the cafe for months now, after all – though admittedly ignoring all operations save for his own. Madame Gouze has never mentioned his expulsion. She only speaks with him here and there, gives him pitying looks when she thinks he won’t notice.

            He isn’t entirely certain why he’d returned at all, whenever he allows himself to think about it. Perhaps because it was familiar.

            Perhaps because he’d left Élise’s letters there, neatly filed, and they were all that was left of her voice, her mind, her heart.

            Or perhaps it was simply because, in the end, he’d felt that it was still _his_. The only place in the vast and broken world that was still his own. 

             The advancing pair of assassins, all but their eyes covered by cloth, are a handy reminder of what a childish game of pretend that was.

            “Are you evicting me at last?” Arno asks, looking up at them from his bench. Standing, walking – it’s not all so difficult as it was hardly a week or so ago. But he’d dared to take a (long, morosely introspective) riverside stroll earlier today, and the ensuing exhaustion burns through him now.

            “The council requires your presence,” one of the assassins says. Arno doesn’t recognize his voice.

            “Regrettably, I’m afraid I must decline,” Arno replies, meeting the man’s eyes. “I have strict doctors’ orders, you see, to avoid activities threatening to my health.”

            He thinks he sees the second assassin roll their eyes. The first simply stares him down. It strikes Arno that he’s very tall, this one. Broad-shouldered. The perfect choice for carrying out an intimidation tactic. He wonders if they’ve ever worked together, if this anonymous former-compatriot has any particular sympathies for an exile of the Brotherhood.  

            “The council requires your presence,” the assassin repeats, no change whatsoever in his tone. He takes one heavy stride forward, shifting his weight such a way that Arno gets the impression he’ll be dragged along if he doesn’t choose to walk.

            “Well, when you put it that way,” he answers. He takes his time standing up.

*

            The hall hasn’t changed. He isn’t sure why he thinks it should have. Only that it has no right to feel so familiar to him, after everything.

            The Masters are waiting – Quemar, Trenet, Beylier – standing just as they were when they’d decided to exile him a lifetime ago, perched on their balcony of eternal judgment, or whatever it’s meant to be. Arno stares up at them through a haze of weariness and pain. They stare back. Analyzing him, he assumes. Deciding precisely how far he’s fallen, probably for their own satisfaction.

            “What a pleasant reunion,” he says, when they fail to greet him.

            “Arno Dorian,” answers Trenet, imperious as ever. “Is it true that you are the one who killed François-Thomas Germain?”

            Arno lets out an empty laugh. It scrapes at the inside of his throat. “You summoned me for _this?_ ”

            Quemar sighs. “Kindly answer the question, Arno.”

            “Élise de la Serre brought Germain down,” Arno says, biting out the words with a kind of twisted pride. “All I did was finish her work.”

            There is a moment of silence during which the Masters glance at each other, Trenet speaking in a low murmur to Quemar.

            And then Beylier speaks. “You have done a great service for the Brotherhood. We are grateful.”

            Arno stares hard at him, at all of them, at the whole damned place in its decadence and duplicity. He feels the weight of all the blood he’s shed for this glorified dungeon, all the pointless assignments, the arguments, the little betrayals.

            “It wasn’t for you,” he says, clear and cold.

            There is a dangerous pause.

            “Nevertheless,” Trenet says evenly. “We are grateful. In light of...recent events, we have revisited the matter of your expulsion.”

            Something in Arno’s chest coils tight, and then twists. “What are you saying?”

            “I am saying, Arno, that the Brotherhood is extending to you the hand of forgiveness,” Trenet answers. “That you may return – on a probationary basis – if you so wish.”

            Arno gazes up at the stained glass behind Trenet, acutely aware of his anonymous friends standing stock-still behind him.

            “I thought,” he says at last, “that the decision of the council was final.”

            All three of them give him looks positively drenched in exasperation.

            “You are being offered a second chance, Arno,” says Beylier. “It is a rare thing for an assassin.”

            Arno shakes his head slowly. “If you had listened to me,” he begins, and feels the room start to spin beneath his feet. He draws a long, deep breath, and lets it out slow, forcing himself to focus. “If you had listened to me the first time...”

            “Arno,” Quemar says warningly.

            “If you had _listened_ ,” Arno repeats louder, “then she might not be dead.”

            It catches him off-guard, the way his voice splinters. A lump lodges in his throat.

            There is another heavy pause.

            “Are you rejecting the council’s offer?” Trenet asks.

            Arno gazes up at her, and finds himself with no answer. For the first time, he has nothing at all to say to any of them. There is nothing to explain, to argue, to question.

            There is nothing _left_.

            He lowers his head, staring at the floor for a moment longer. And then he turns, and walks away.

            The assassins make no move to stop him.

*

            Bonaparte is waiting in his room when Arno drags himself  up the last flight of stairs. He’s sitting in the reading chair, paging through what must be his latest favorite; Arno can hardly keep track of the general’s rotating tastes.

            “You look awful,” Bonaparte comments.

            Arno ignores him utterly. He sinks onto his bed and sets about unbuttoning his coat, dragging off his boots. It takes too long, his hands fumbling, shaking. He knows Bonaparte is watching him. He doesn’t care.

            He doesn’t _care_. About any of it.

            The medicine at his bedside is gone, drained dry, and Arno curses at the empty vial, slamming it down on the table so hard that he’s surprised it doesn’t shatter. Larrey had told him that would be the last of it. He’d known. He’d known that already. 

            He hears the soft thump of a heavy book, carefully shut.

            “Perhaps,” says Bonaparte, in his slow, calm voice, “you would benefit from a drink.”

            Arno turns sharply toward him, feels a rush of senseless anger at the concern visible in the general’s eyes.

            “Perhaps I would,” he snaps. “Perhaps you could bring up a bottle instead of sitting there reading my books.”

            Bonaparte narrows his eyes, setting the book down upon the desk. “You _are_ in a state.”

            Arno closes his eyes for a moment and forces himself to focus on breathing, like he’s been injured all over again. When he opens his eyes once more, he finds Bonaparte watching him with a complicated expression.

            “Please,” Arno says dully. “Would you please bring up a bottle.”

            “What’s happened to you?” Bonaparte inquires, standing, and Arno gives a frustrated sigh.

            “The _bottle_ ,” he says.

            “Well, since you asked so politely,” Bonaparte answers, a flare of annoyance finally making an appearance. Nevertheless he disappears down the stairs, returning moments later with one of the more expensive wines, two glasses in hand.

*

            They drink.

            Granted, Arno drinks rather more than Bonaparte. They sit together beside the desk, the general speaking nearly the whole time, though Arno isn’t entirely sure what about. He’s been half-listening, half-drowning in the usual set of memories. His father, Monsieur de la Serre, Élise, Élise, Élise, Élise.

            He’d finally tucked the letters away again yesterday morning. Folded them neatly, rather than leaving them scattered across the desk. He’d tried writing a letter to her about a month ago, the way he’d written to his father when he was small. But the words wouldn’t come. There were none. They had already been said.

            _I love you._

_I’m sorry._

            That, he thinks, is the entire world, when you get down to it. _I love you. I’m sorry._ Playing out again and again and again, a thousand new versions everyday.

            Arno drains his third glass, and drops his aching head to his hands. He’s aware of Bonaparte’s words slowing into silence.

            “Dorian. What’s happened to you?” Bonaparte repeats at last.

            And, for some reason, Arno tells him.

            “They wanted me to come back,” he mumbles.

            Bonaparte studies him. “Your bloodthirsty little cult, you mean.”

            Arno gives him a look. “Yes,” he deadpans. “My bloodthirsty little cult.”

            “I take it you told them no.”

            “I told them nothing,” Arno says bitterly. “I left.”

            “Ah,” says Bonaparte. “So, the offer remains.”

            Arno snorts. “I strongly doubt that.”

            Bonaparte leans back in his chair, folding his arms. “Do you want it to remain?”

            “It has never mattered,” Arno says, “what I want.”

            “I do hope you don’t believe that’s somehow noble.”

             Arno manages a humorless smile. “I suffer no such delusions.”

            “Dorian,” says Bonaparte, leaning forward again to catch his gaze. “I have, several times now, offered you a job –”

            Arno lets out a short, frustrated breath. “ _This_ again.”

            “—which would provide you with the opportunity to reach your _full potential_ , rather than skulking around in alleyways –”

            “I do not _skulk_. I never _skulked_.” Arno reaches clumsily for the wine bottle.

            Bonaparte moves with sudden swiftness, closing his hand around Arno’s wrist just as he’s about to pour himself another glass. Arno yanks his hand back, scowling up into fierce gray eyes.

            “ _Listen_ to me,” Bonaparte says. “You are extraordinary, Arno Dorian, in every way. You would ascend through the ranks in hardly any time –”

            “I don’t care about ranks,” Arno mutters. “I don’t care –”

            “Yes, which is a bloody terrible waste,” Bonaparte snaps.

            Arno stops, staring hard at him. It’s difficult. The wine brings the second sight bleeding into his vision again, all streaky blues and whites and golds.

            “ _Général_ –”

            “Napoleon.”

            “ _Napoleon_ ,” Arno snaps back at him. “What is it you _want_? A soldier? A librarian? A confidant? Why are you _here?_ ”

            The deep gray of Napoleon’s eyes seems to darken, and Arno realizes by the hard set of his mouth – by the stiff, careful way he leans back into his chair – that he doesn’t know any better than Arno does.

            The idea is enough to startle the anger out of him again.

            “I – sorry,” he says, looking down at his hands. “I meant...”

            “So is that it, then?” Napoleon interrupts, suddenly businesslike and brusque in a way that Arno’s wine-drenched brain has trouble following. “You’ll reject the offer from your former fellows, you’ll reject the offer from _me_ , you’ll spend your days sulking about and drinking –”

            “I have not been –”

            “—until the next little accident, until finally no one happens to come and collect you before you bleed out into the gutter. Is that it? Do you think she’d be pleased?”

            Arno’s heart punches in his chest. “What?”

            “Your Élise,” says Napoleon. “What would she think?”

            It hurts to hear her name on a good day. It’s searing, to hear it fall so carelessly from Bonaparte’s lips. To hear the question he’s been asking himself ceaselessly in private suddenly dragged ugly and raw into the world.

            Arno stands up in one rough movement, gripping onto the nearest piece of furniture. “Why don’t you go back to playing soldier,” he says. It’s a weak attempt at an insult and he knows it, doesn’t particularly give a damn at the moment. “Go off and fight your bloody stupid wars for some bloody stupid politician, go –” He stumbles badly, swaying, and nearly hits the floor. Would have, if not for Bonaparte’s arms.

            “You are acting like an absolute fool,” Napoleon says, with great distaste. His face is very close to Arno’s, his eyes sharp and bright. For one strange moment he’s lit in brilliant gold.

            Arno shoves away from him, managing to drag himself to his bed despite the spinning, too-bright room. “Keep the damned books,” he mutters.

            “I’m sorry?”

            “Whatever books you have. Keep them.”

            If Napoleon replies, Arno doesn’t hear it. He closes his eyes, banishing the world and all its warring colors, and listens with bitter satisfaction to the sound of boots disappearing down the stairs.

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arno closes his eyes against another lightning flash, pulling the pocketwatch from his coat out of habit. Like a child looking for comfort, he clicks it open and shut, open and shut, open and shut, open and shut, to the time of his slowly, impossibly beating heart.

            Arno rises too early the next morning, drags himself and his persistent, pounding headache through the meager routine he’s managed to develop over the past weeks. It’s getting easier and easier to do the smaller things, like bending down to lace his boots, or buttoning his coat without having the breath knocked out of him just from the bit of pressure against his side. It’s getting easier to walk at a regular pace, to make his little trips to the nearest bakery and sometimes just a touch further.

            This, he thinks, should be a welcome improvement. Instead it simply frees his mind to focus further on things unrelated to his slow crawl of a recovery. Such as how empty the writing desk looks without Élise’s letters spilled sloppily across it. How empty his room feels altogether. How empty his days have become. And how recovering from the wound had filled them, temporarily, in a strange sort of way.

            He still cannot, for the life of him, for all that is still sane in him, remember exactly what happened to cause a near-fatal slice of a blade into his gut. Cannot remember why he was in a position to anger any city guards in the first place – what had been his objective, where had he been going, _why_ had he been going?

            To procure a drink, probably, he thinks, since there is nothing else he has approached with any particular urgency or passion since the Temple. Or rather not since he had carried Élise from the Temple. Had seen to it that she was buried properly. After that, there was...

            A lot of darkness. A lot of dark spots in his memory. A lot of dim, hazy, ruinous days, lost to drunkenness or simply to drowning in the unbearable injustice of his own survival.

             He can hear a voice that sounds distinctly like Bonaparte – damn him – in his mind, settling in to join his own ever-self-critical inner monologue now. So disdainful, so impossibly removed from everything. _What would she think?_

            Arno pauses in the middle of strapping on his blade and bracer, sitting on the edge of his bed, staring at the neatly folded workings of the phantom blade. His head truly does _ache_ , no doubt from the wine last night, and at least partially from the conversation. It would be easier to lie back down for a while, he thinks. It would be easier...

            _What would she think?_ his mind whispers, this time in his own voice again.

            Arno clenches his jaw. He finishes adjusting the bracer on his wrist.

            He stands up.

*

            The baker recognizes him.

            For some reason this causes Arno to pause, blinking at the woman. She smiles back at him.

            “I’m...sorry,” he says. “What did you say?”

            “I said you’re looking much better, _monsieur_ ,” the baker repeats. “It must have been a nasty illness, to leave you so pale. Do you feel better?”

            “Oh,” Arno says faintly. He tries to smile. It feels strange. “Yes, I...Yes. Thank you.”

            “Of course. _Bonne journée_.”

            He mumbles a farewell, carrying his bread back toward the Seine in an odd daze. How long has it been since he’s _spoken_ to someone? Someone besides Larrey, who only wants to discuss the likelihood of Arno’s death by infection; or Madame Gouze, who carries pity in every glance; or...

            Or Napoleon, _damn_ him, with his long and self-centered rambles, his revolting arrogance and his striking intelligence, his maddening assumption that Arno finds any value at all in his literary opinions, in his evaluations of Arno’s choices, in his _presence_.

             “I ought to find better people to talk to,” Arno mutters to the bread in his hands. A few people passing by give him odd looks.

            Well. Not them, then.           

*

            It begins to rain as soon as he steps foot in the garden, which is not particularly unexpected based on the heavy clouds overhanging the city. Still, Arno mutters a vehement curse – which appears to offend the gardener, who gives him a startled look.

            “Sorry,” Arno says, and turns away to go inside.

            “No, no, I quite agree, _Monsieur_ Dorian,” the gardener replies, and Arno glances back to find the man scowling at the clouds. “A waste of a day, but what can we do? The world does what it wishes.”

            Arno finds this to be both an unnecessary and unsatisfying pronouncement. He grants the gardener a noncommittal, “Mm,” in response, and he’s turning to leave again when it occurs to him that he doesn’t know the gardener’s name. How? The man knows _his_ name, clearly, but evidently Arno’s been too much of a self-centered bastard to ever ask.

            _Talk to people_ , he hears Élise say, and suddenly they’re young again – practically still children – and he’s wandering about awkwardly at one of _Monsieur_ de la Serre’s social occasions, dressed in unfamiliar finery. Élise takes him by the arm, introduces him brightly to the sons and daughters of nobles _. You must_ talk _to people, Arno, or they’ll never know how really excellent you are._

            The world crashes back around him in a patter of rain and a low rumble of thunder, and Arno realizes he’s been standing there getting soaked, staring blankly into the middle distance. The gardener is giving him a curious look.

            Arno does not feel particularly excellent at the moment.

            “I...wonder,” he says, pausing at the nervous sound of his own voice. “...if you might tell me your name.”

            “Oh,” says the gardener, looking surprised, but he follows Arno in out of the downpour. “Michel Colignon, _monsieur_.”

            “A pleasure to meet you,” Arno replies, then adds, “Er. Formally.”

            Colignon still seems puzzled, but he smiles hesitantly. “Ah... _oui._ And...I hope you don’t mind my saying, but you are looking much better, _Monsieur_ Dorian.”

            “You’ve noticed too,” Arno says in faint wonderment, and Colignon appears puzzled again, and Arno again hastily summons a smile to cover his own cursed mismanagement of manners. “ _Merci_ ,” he corrects, and gives the gardener a nod, making his escape back up the stairs to his rooms again as quickly as he can.

            _There_ , says Élise. _That wasn’t so difficult, was it?_

            “It very much _was_ ,” he mutters back. “Why _is_ that?”

            Élise doesn’t respond.

            Arno feels a great and inexplicable weariness coming over him, impossible to fend off. So he lays back on his bed, listening to the rain on the roof, the thunder grown louder. Lightning flashes and sends him back to the Temple again, dodging impossible bolts of crackling lightning from Germain’s sword.

            That monstrous thing. He’d locked it away. Had not had the wherewithal to bring it to the Assassins, despite the fact that he strongly suspects they would know better than he what to do with it. He had considered dropping it into the Seine for the sheer satisfaction, but eventually decided it was too dangerous to leave out in the world. Some idiot – or some _Bonaparte –_ might drag it up out of the muck.

            So now it sits hidden in a chest in his room, as though this is an actual intelligent alternative.

            He’ll bring it to the Assassins, he assures himself. He will. Eventually. When he feels like breathing dungeon air again.

            Or when – _if_ – he feels like reconsidering that offer.

            Arno closes his eyes against another lightning flash, pulling the pocketwatch from his coat out of habit. Like a child looking for comfort, he clicks it open and shut, open and shut, open and shut, open and shut _,_ to the time of his slowly, impossibly beating heart.

*

            The storm passes by mid-afternoon, which is about when he notices the book. The book which is not his, sitting in the chair where Napoleon had been last night.

            Arno stares at it, narrowing his eyes, inadvertently honing in like it’s a Templar he’s trying to track. Which is rather unfortunate for his headache. He winces and rubs at his forehead, then strides over to the chair, lifting the book and turning it over.

            A well-worn edition of _The Iliad_. And definitely not his. Definitely, judging by the absurd amount of notes in the margin, the property of one Napoleon Bonaparte.

            The thought fills him with a tangle of unpleasant emotion, and he scowls at the thing, seized by an irrational urge to throw it across the room. Or perhaps into the Seine. Shouldn’t he be allowed to throw _something_ into the Seine?

            But then the image of Napoleon striding back here to find the book – and Arno knows he must, he _will_ – comes to mind, and Arno decides he does not want to have to tell the _Général_ that his _Iliad_ is at the bottom of a river. It will lead to further conversation, and Arno has a firm and vested interest in avoiding that.

            He stands there for a good long moment, trying to calculate how far exactly he is from Bonaparte’s apartments, how much strength is left in him today, how badly he wants to be rid of the damned thing.

            The sunlight, wholly victorious now against the retreating gloom, pours in through his windows, and Arno casts his gaze outside.

            It’s a lovely day, he decides, for a walk.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The wiki says that the gardener's name is "Mr. Colignon" and that he was noted to have been suspiciously hanging about a cellar but he seems all right to me. Also I think we are officially canon-divergent as I have no idea what Arno actually did with the sword and I do not care to look it up. Also thanks for reading!


	6. Chapter 6

In retrospect, the office window was a bad idea, ground floor or not. But Arno is here now, after quite a bit of careful maneuvering through shadows and crowds to avoid the eyes of the guard. It was no small feat, to get this close to the general’s apartments and remain unnoticed, and he’s loathe to try to find another entrance at this point. So he grimaces and swings himself through the frame with rather less elegance than he’d like, gritting his teeth against the striking pain.

            Of course there’s a gun to his head before he can even straighten his spine. Cold metal presses against his aching skull, and Arno freezes in a half-crouch, raising his eyes but not his hands.

            Napoleon stares down at him. “Dorian,” he says, relief and surprise and annoyance all warring in his expression. The gun drops away, and Napoleon takes a step back, returning it to its holster. He’s otherwise out of his uniform, looking smaller and more tired than Arno remembers ever seeing him. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your unannounced intrusion?”

            Arno straightens stiffly, removes the book from his coat pocket, and proceeds to drop it on Napoleon’s desk with a _thunk_. Papers scatter everywhere, fluttering across the desk and to the floor.

            Napoleon, save for raising one eyebrow, does not move.

            “You left this,” Arno says unnecessarily. “It’s not mine.”

            Napoleon looks at the mess of his desk for a breath, then at Arno’s empty expression. “Well,” he says, “my apologies for this terribly offensive crime.” He pauses, and Arno knows he would feel the general’s eyes sweeping over him even if he wasn’t watching the open scrutiny in the man’s face. “You climbed in through my window.”

            “Yes,” says Arno.

            “You’ve hurt yourself.”

            Arno considers denying it. Doesn’t much see the point.

            “Yes,” he repeats.

            Napoleon sighs at him and somehow manages to make a simple exhale feel condescending. Like Arno is a particularly difficult child, or more likely a rebellious new recruit.

            “Sit down,” says the general.

            “I’d rather not.”

            “You’ve hurt yourself,” Napoleon repeats, more irritated than concerned. “Don’t act like a fool.”

            “An _absolute fool_ , I think it was,” Arno offers, unmoving. “If you’re attempting consistency.”

            “Dorian,” says Napoleon sharply, and he stands straight and nearly-tall, staring at Arno with an unfamiliar chill to his gaze, and Arno knows he is looking at _Général Bonaparte_ now – military jacket or not. “Sit _down_.”

            And Arno, who has never been one for following orders, who has been the subject of exasperation and dismay all his life for this near-fatal flaw, obeys.

            He can blame the weakness of his knees, the burning ache in his side, the long walk and the climb and the lingering unsteadiness of the morning’s storm. He can blame any number of things besides the steel in Napoleon’s eyes, but either way he sinks down into the nearest chair and tries not to show his relief. The walk here had been, as it turned out, slightly beyond the scope of his current abilities, and his body had begun issuing its protests hardly a few minutes into the endeavor.

            Napoleon, for his part, looks annoyingly satisfied. “I am sorry we parted on bad terms,” he says, beginning to pace slowly. He’s limping, Arno realizes. An old wound, or a new one? Arno has never noticed it before, but these days that doesn’t mean much.

            “We met on bad terms,” Arno points out. He’s not sure what brings that to his lips, but Napoleon pauses and grants him a small smile.

            And for a brief moment the formality and the challenge and the lingering resentment between them feels distant. For a moment they are simply – simply Arno, simply Napoleon. Two men caught in the same damn post-revolutionary mess. Ambitious in utterly opposite ways, moving in utterly different directions – but drawn together here nonetheless. If only in this room, if only for a moment. There’s a startling vulnerability to it.

            “How are you?” Napoleon asks, and something twists uncomfortably in Arno’s chest at the sudden sincerity.

            “Oh, you know. Delightful as ever,” he responds, and Napoleon nods once, and then a strange silence falls between them.

            Arno’s fingers itch for his pocketwatch. This is decidedly not how it was supposed to go. He’d had visions of slipping in through the window, dropping the book on the desk, and slipping away again without saying a word. (Or, well, perhaps a few barbed words if he was so inclined.) He had intended to end it here, whatever remains of their little alliance.

            After all, there is nothing of substance left between them. Arno is no longer a convenient weapon poised to remove stubborn royalists or rogue soldiers with the flash of a blade. He may as well be an attack dog with pulled teeth – intimidating from a distance, possibly, but ultimately capable of a good growl and nothing more. And Napoleon, for his part, can no longer offer any information that will help to ease the weight of guilt on Arno’s shoulders.

            There is nothing of substance left between them, but for a few strides and the dark look in Napoleon’s eyes.

             “I met my gardener today,” Arno says suddenly, and the sense of exposure is almost worth it for the bewildered look that Napoleon gives him.

            “Your...I have seen you speak to him,” he says.

            “Yes, but I hadn’t known his name.”

            “ _Monsieur_ Colignon,” Napoleon says, and now Arno knows he himself must look bewildered.

            “ _You_ knew his name?”

            “Yes, well, he thought I was some sort of trespasser. The night I...” He waves a hand vaguely.

            “Dragged me half-dead from the gutter,” Arno supplies.

            Napoleon’s expression doesn’t change, but his eyes seem to lighten. The room itself seems to lighten, in fact, the tension easing a little between them.

            “Yes. That. So, I introduced myself.”

            Arno leans back in the chair, eyes drifting to the ceiling. “Well, I never had. It must have been years, and I never had.”

            “You have been rather preoccupied,” Napoleon says, and he moves to sit down at his desk, across from Arno, favoring the leg as he goes.

            Arno raises his eyebrows. “Is that an excuse?”

            “Of course not. A man will not survive long in this world if he cannot see beyond his own preoccupations.” Napoleon looks down at _The Iliad_ , still in the center of his desk, pages of what Arno now recognizes as messily scrawled notes still scattered around it. He makes no move to sort the papers, simply opens the cover of the book and gazes at the first page as though trying to decipher something from the title printed there.

            “You, however, have been fortunate,” he adds.

            Arno lets out a hollow laugh. “Oh, yes. It’s been a _lifetime_ of good fortune.”

            Napoleon _hmm_ s at this, lifting his eyes again to Arno’s. “To be alive at all,” he says, “is good fortune.”

            There is something about his stare that stills Arno’s breath, and he struggles to bring himself back to clarity, hears the tension in his own voice when he speaks. “I had not thought you a philosopher.”

            Napoleon leans back in his own chair now. The sheer and honest amusement in his expression is surprisingly disarming. “No,” he agrees. “Simply a soldier. It is a victory, isn’t it, to survive to fight again?”

            Arno does not point out that Napoleon Bonaparte, of all people, is far from simply a soldier. “Perhaps,” he says instead. “For a soldier.”

            “Surely for an assassin as well.”

            Arno feels his jaw tighten. “I’m not an assassin.”

            Napoleon says nothing to that. Merely regards him from his desk with a kind of open curiosity that makes Arno want to squirm in his seat. Instead he closes his eyes against the dull throb in his head.

            _What is it you want?_ his own ragged voice from hours ago comes back to him now. _Why are you here?_

“You’ve yet to be rid of the hood,” Napoleon says at last. His voice is too close. Arno opens his eyes to find the general standing before him, studying him. Napoleon’s hand reaches out in a gesture just shy of touching Arno’s wrist. “Or the blade.”

            Their eyes meet. The air feels sharp.        

            “Is that what makes an assassin, then?” Arno asks. His voice is edged with something he can’t quite identify. “A hood and a blade?”

            Napoleon smiles faintly, hand still hovering in the air. “I wouldn’t know.”

            This close, Arno can see the shadows beneath his eyes. He wonders what it is, exactly, that keeps the general up at night. Surely no moral concerns plague him. No guilt, no grief, could sink its claws into that cool demeanor, that shameless ambition.

            This close, though, he looks –

            Young. Human. Perhaps a little conflicted.

            He looks down, and touches Arno’s wrist lightly. Unabashed, inquisitive, like Arno is simply some sort of new or defective weapon to inspect. His fingers trail to the edge of the gauntlet, thumb brushing over the exposed skin and lingering there.  

            And Arno doesn’t move. He watches, and listens to his own unsteady breath.

_(What do you want?)_

_(Why are you here?)_

            “Surely,” says Napoleon quietly, “it means something.”

            Arno wants to tell him that he’s wrong. That it’s simple practicality, that these are the last dregs of a life he’d never chosen but still needs to protect himself from. That all of it has amounted to nothing but a disastrous, pointless chase, a set of injustices repeated until the very concept of justice is obliterated. That each time he’s plunged that glorified knife into a gasping throat, it has meant nothing, accomplished nothing. That each burn of betrayal never left a mark.

            “What happened to your leg?” he says instead. It’s difficult to keep his voice even.

            Napoleon’s hand doesn’t move from Arno’s wrist, as though he’s frozen there, fixed to that spot. “A gunshot wound,” he murmurs. “From Toulon. Healed, now, but the rain brings it back.”

            “The storm this morning,” Arno says, thinking of the general listening to the thunder as Arno had, of the prickle of pain that must have begun to rise in the old wound.

            “Yes.”

            His eyes are the same gray as the clouds had been that morning.

            There is nothing of substance left between them. A thin remainder of space, easily crossed simply by standing.

            So he does.

            “Arno,” Napoleon says, with warning and with wonder, remaining very still but for the hand tightening around Arno’s wrist, fingertips pressing just above his pulse. Their foreheads are nearly touching.

            “It does,” Arno says. He feels a little dizzy, but maybe that’s the headache, or the exhaustion. He feels as he had the night that Napoleon dragged him back to the cafe. Unmoored, desperate to be grounded.

            “I’m sorry?” the general murmurs.

            “Mean something.”

             And Arno tilts his head just so, the barest movement to close that last fraction of distance, so that there is nothing between them at all.

            There’s a sense of crushing inevitability as their lips meet. As though it has always been leading to this, all of it, as though he’d had no more choice in this than in anything else that has ever befallen him. The kiss is quiet, muted, a shadow of the shuddering desperation in Arno’s chest, and it lasts hardly any time at all before he’s leaning back again. Unmoored again.

            Napoleon’s hand falls away from Arno’s wrist. He takes a sharp and uneven breath. It might be comical, under different circumstances, to see him so lost for words.

             “Arno,” he repeats, and Arno turns away. Makes it back to the window in a few long strides, his legs trembling.

            He half expects an admonishment. Some sort of order, some sort of criticism. But the general doesn’t instruct him to turn around, to come back, to stop acting like a fool. He says nothing at all.

            When Arno glances back through the window, Napoleon is simply standing there in the center of the room, silent, watching him disappear.

**Author's Note:**

> So, I'm taking some historical liberties here with the timeline. I'm also sort of not entirely acknowledging the events of the DLC for the purposes of this fic, but this would obviously take place some time after Elise's death. Arno references the fact that Napoleon was (historically) put under house arrest for a short time, and that occurred the same year Elise died (1794).


End file.
